Stop the Madness is a collection of essays recording my thoughts during a transformative period in my life. It is about how the world became what it is and what we must do for human civilization to survive.
The central task is to abandon the illusion of separation.
Our children only can have freedom and security if we do. War will become unthinkable when we abandon the self-fulfilling prophecy that it is inevitable.

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Tuesday, September 1, 2009

CHAPTER EIGHTY ONE. THE GAME OF MONOPOLY-A HOLOGRAPHIC VIEW OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Apr 9, 2010 7:02 AM PDT

This essay is dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, who rose to the Presidency in America despite the intentions of the corporate Puppetmasters of his day, who wanted to put him safely out of the reach of power by making him Vice President. Their intention was to make him subservient to the their Senate Puppet Mark Hannah and the corporatist cabal that the Senate had become with the rise of the Robber Barons after Lincoln was safely dead and his plans for a conciliatory Reconstruction had been forgotten.

It is one of those amazing ironies that the popular corporate tool President McKinley was assassinated by an apparent madman, sweeping Roosevelt into office just as Hannah had feared when he called his colleagues fools for “placing a madman within the heartbeat of the Presidency.” He considered Roosevelt mad for his crazy belief in the democratic ideal of giving all Americans an equal chance to succeed in what had become a ruthless capitalistic system to promote the interests of the wealthy elite over those of the average American. Roosevelt succeeded in holding fascism in America at bay while the People of America once again had the opportunity to become the masters of their own destiny by choosing a leader who understood their interdependence and the nature of democracy. It is a shame that they as quickly forgot it in their newfound relative wealth and the establishment of some of their basic rights.

In subsequently electing a number of the players of the game of Monopoly, they set the stage for disaster. It seems that they had not understood Roosevelt’s lesson that they could not assume that these rights could be maintained only by their continuing to exercise their right to choose leaders who kept all of their interest in mind in speaking and acting in their name. Instead, they chose to elect players who wanted to resume the game of Monopoly that Roosevelt had rudely interrupted.

Teddy’s cousin Franklin rose to lead the world by following the notion that democracy depended on such opportunity and freedom from the fear of want of basic necessities and the opportunity to succeed without Monopoly players taking it all away in their quest for economic and political dominance over the hoi polloi on whose work the generation of wealth depends.

Unfortunately, it took the suffering of millions during the Great Depression to awaken the slumbering giant of the American people that this basic right could only be achieved in a just and democratic society. What is worse, it took a World War begun by a subjugated loser in the game of Risk for Americans suddenly conscious of their role in the game of Life. Thus did the United States accomplish the objective of restoring the once again united states to their traditional role of acting as just world leaders in the advance of democracy.

The war had once again forced the people of that proud nation to become one People who took care of one another and were conscious of their responsibility to assure that justice and democracy putting world fascism to bay. Afterward, another President who was a survivor of the First World War of the corporatists in charge of directing the pawns in the game of Risk came to power by the death of Roosevelt. Having risen from the common people, he had learned from his role as a pawn in the game of Risk that the game only has winners and losers when the nations whose people comprise the Armies cooperate and are magnanimous in victory.

This is how one of our generals who had helped win the war take the lead in restoring our battered and defeated foes to vitality in the Marshall Plan. The united states showed their generosity and earned the right to lead the free world only when they shared their newly restored wealth. It worked to accomplish a greater good in creating two new democracies from what once were an Imperialist hereditary dictatorship and a Imperialist corporate state. In so doing, they assured that neither would arise again from the ashes of these ancient peoples who had given up their chance at democracy in becoming players in the game of Risk.

Only by studying the cause of war can the People of the United States understand how the international alliances of the international Masters of the universe caused the horrors that plagued Mankind during the global conflict cynically marketed and sold to the People of the disunited states as the War to End All Wars. Players in the game of Monopoly always seek to gain power over others under cover of war.

Nationalism surges while these Puppetmasters gleefully engage in the mortal struggle for global dominance that is the game of Risk played out on a game board covering our planet. Instead of allowing our children to become pawns in this evil game, we must remember that we are all in the game together and we choose our own enemies. To quote Walt Kelly and his fictional creation Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us” in times of war.

Roosevelt was neither a fool nor a madman. He understood well that democracy cannot survive when government is run by and for the interests of corporations. Having written more books than Bush has ever read, he knew that unregulated capitalism is by its nature anti-democratic. Democracy depends on the principle of every American having equal worth and an equal right to share in the prosperity of the nation built by their collective hands, not by greedy investors never satisfied with the riches they earned from others' sweat.

Roosevelt understood that Life is a game that is quite different from the game of Monopoly. The purpose of Life is to get a job, raise a family and send ourselves and our children to school so that each of us may enjoy a better life. This was a very popular game in the early 60s, when I was growing up and it was generally understood that educated citizens need to understand the basic requirements to maintain democracy.

The importance of an educated citizenry was not lost on Roosevelt, who surely knew that Jefferson had asked that his only accomplishment listed on his tombstone be “The founder and first President of the University of Virginia.” Jefferson and Roosevelt were Teachers who Trained us to be the Ones Who Would Change the World “ so that the last, best hope for freedom shall not perish from the Earth,” in the words of Lincoln.

Monopoly is a game in which it quickly becomes clear that someone has gained enough advantage that the others are merely in the game to provide the funds that will make one of them the most rich and powerful player. It seems to me that the sole purpose of Monopoly is to teach our children that the single minded pursuit of money and property is a crashing bore, or so I always found it. Unfortunately, it seems more the case that it teaches our undereducated children, to believe that they can have whatever they want if they try. Living in a society now dominated by a TV version of a “reality” where everyone has the opportunity to possess whatever they want, it becomes a tough chore to teach them that in today’s society, it is privilege of birth that is the greatest determinant.

Roosevelt survived an assassin’s bullet to continue to fight for the common man over the corporate oligarchy when his friend and successor William Howard Taft seemed too ready to accommodate the counter-Revolutionaries who appeared close to wiping out the gains of the Revolution by 1912. He had begun to hand back power to the very corporatist Robber Barons who had unfairly amassed their power and wealth at the expense of the People.

Taft had apparently been dozing when the railroad-controlled Supreme Court had invented the corporatist doctrine that the artificial “persons” who are corporations have all of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution to living, breathing, voting Americans and those who fell under its rule of law. Roosevelt understood this and understood that the game of Monopoly could lead to the swift end of the American experiment in democracy.

Was Lincoln’s assassination, like Roosevelt’s ascendance to the Presidency, mere historical happenstance? Was the Commander in Chief left unguarded by a tippling veteran of a recent bloody war on the same night that Booth had planned to assassinate him by chance or by design? Why would an NCO who was also a veteran of this war have put such a man on guard of the new hero of the nation when there were assassination plots revealed before, throughout and after the war? Lincoln had been guarded by Pinkerton’s boys on his trip to the inauguration in 1861.

These goons may already have been off to become the corporate hit squad they were in Theodore Roosevelt’s day. Lured by the stench of the cheese set out by the corporate Puppetmasters of the Senate, this private mercenary Army served in the bloody police riots as a sort of Blackwater of the early days of the 20th century in the United States. They thus dutifully served the interests of the nation’s oligarchy of corporatists in a war of against the people instead of protecting the right of the People. Among these was the right to own and direct their own government that was created to serve their interests rather than the players of the game of Monopoly.

Lincoln’s murder may only have been the result of fickle fate, as perhaps was the seemingly miraculous escape of Washington’s Continental Army from Haarlem Heights under an unexpected cover of fog. The Army had been devastated in the inexperienced commander’s ill planned New York campaign and would have been wiped out but for the intervention of either fate or Providence.

How we view the meaning of these signal events depends on our perspective. Regardless of whether one believes in Divine intercession, the fact is that had the Army been captured the Revolution would have died in its infancy. Had Lincoln not been murdered, the rise of the corporatocracy might have been forestalled. If God is on the side of democracy, it is still leaving us to decide how to interpret events then and now and leaving it to us to decide if continuing the battle for freedom, democracy and peace is worth the fight. History will judge us according to our collective choices.

The thinking man has to wonder why someone has risen to meet every challenge to representative democracy from the Revolution to the Civil War to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Is it that the urgency of the moment awakens America to listen to the voice of the true patriot? Perhaps at such moments people are more open to receiving the truth, whether it be from an aristocrat from New York or Virginia or from a plainspoken man from the backwoods of the West. Lincoln had known depression and despair, yet by humor and faith drove himself to deliver his message to the People. He may have simply been the one who first saw the change that was coming and had faith that the People now ready to listen to the truth as the nation threatened to tear itself apart over the issue of human bondage. However, those who respect Lincoln and his accomplishments would honor him by remembering that he gave all the credit to the will of Providence.

This is the moment to decide whether to fight for the freedom of all men and women to live without fear of war, poverty, hunger and ignorance. All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men and women to do nothing. I do not believe for a moment that Jesus is going to come down on a white horse and save us for the consequences of our own decisions. The man who taught his followers “Judge not, lest ye be judged” is not going to sort out the “good” from the “bad.” To choose to divide one’s self from others by judging them unworthy of respect is to make a decision that I believe Jesus would clearly disapprove of. His message, like that of Mohammed, was one of universal equality and respect. Only by working together to break down the artificial distinctions that divide us can we hope to prevail over the self-appointed Masters of the Universe who would enslave us all.

In the immortal words of John Lennon and Paul McCartney:

Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the gameIt's easy.

There's nothing you can make that can't be made.No one you can save that can't be saved.Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be youin time - It's easy.

All you need is love, all you need is love,All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.All you need is love, all you need is love,All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.Nothing you can see that isn't shown.Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.It's easy.

All you need is love, all you need is love,All you need is love, love, love is all you need.All you need is love (all together now)All you need is love (everybody)All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

4 comments:

Yes, it is important to always remember that there is no Divine intercession without us. We make the truth and justice come alive. We make God's works reveal themselves. Those who wait, wait forever, or more correctly, are the allies of the devil and of destruction. Those who act fulfill God's purpose. This is why The biblical story of the fall from Eden is a huge leap forward for humankind from the story of Oedipus. In the Greek story, no matter how hard his parents and he try to avoid the will of the gods, they run right into it and thus have no free will at all, their lives being as meaningful as the existence of a piece of paper or a stone. On the other hand, the fact that God wanted to prevent Adam and Eve from eating the fruit but held back because He knew that Adam and Eve's freedom to make their own causes and experience the logical and orderly results of them was billions of times more important than a paradise and luxury they could not have possibly appreciated, having no sense of cause and effect, of action and consequence, in short of freedom, is proof that the Biblical view of humankind is that we have free will. Actions have consequences. Oedipus' actions to avoid evil are to no avail. Adam's actions to disregard the warning result in the exact result that is given to him beforehand. Thus, Adam is free while Oedipus is not. By being free, he has power while the Greek man of legend completely lacks it. Hence, we can save ourselves but we have to act consciously, wisely and purposefully. Logic, cause and effect will definitely play out.

Great contribution that I will view again later Doc. Very therapeutic to see, wish it were seen more often. Profound solutions need repeating often right now. Hopefully in a way that drives us to efficiency in unified consciousness as well as specific action. Thank you.

Thanks for your comments, Marc. I can see that you came by your Buddhist beliefs after careful reflection on the meaning of the teachings of Christ, as I did.

Side by side, I see no contradiction between the heart of Buddhist teaching and the heart of Christ's teaching. You expressed the idea very well: http://takebackamericaforthepeople.blogspot.com/2009/10/chapter-sixty-eight-religion-viewed-as.html

Thanks for reading the essay, Steward. Sorry for taking so long to respond. I hope that you will share this message of hope with others.

You must be reading the book because you have surmised that what I am writing about is a specific solution to the world's problems by offering specific suggestions to bring people of all beliefs to agree on universal truths.

I believe the solution is to end fascism in the United States as the way to free ourselves from the dystopian New World Order that fascists are creating. The only way to do this is to pass a constitutional amendment abolishing corporate personhood and returning control of the US government to its People.

In the process we will free the Peoples of other nations to liberate themselves so that we may find a way to live together in a life-affirming world where we all recognize our interdependence. In such a world, war will be unthinkable.

About Me

I am a former VA psychiatrist who resigned to run for the US Senate in 2010 on a pledge to introduce a Constitutional amendment to reform campaign finance.
I have a BS from Portland State University in Biology and Psychology. I worked in a county mental health agency after serving in the Army and trained in Albany, NY and Albuquerque, NM.
I am interested in history, philosophy, psychology, comparative religion and a variety of other disciplines.
I now work full time for the educational nonprofit Take Back America for the People and with an anarchical world network of justice activists, Soldiers For Peace International. As Soldiers For Peace, our mission in the US is to help Americans understand the need to establish democracy in the US by working to amend the constitution to ban corporate campaign expenditures, limit individual contributions to influence elections and abolish corporate personhood.
SFPI and TBA are meant to help create a united international front against fascism and war by helping create a Tectonic Paradigm Shift in human consciousness to one in which it is implicitly recognized that the fate of each of us is intimately related to the destiny of all of us.